


Diving into the Wreck

by ifeelbetter



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 14:18:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5500451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifeelbetter/pseuds/ifeelbetter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lt. James Rhodes of Starfleet has stalled out at the rank of lieutenant because he'd rather stay at the helm of the ship than command it. He also accidentally befriended Tony Stark once upon a time and it's easier to keep Tony's secrets if he never attracts any attention.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Diving into the Wreck

**Author's Note:**

> I completely forgot I had written so much of this fic! Clearly, AO3 needs this. I'm sure you all feel very gratified that I finally remembered to post this.

“We’re going to have to talk about career advancement at some point,” said Captain Hill. She wiped a finger lazily across the data padd in front of her, not bothering to look up at the young man in front of her.

“Sir,” said Lt. Rhodes. 

“You can’t stay a pilot forever,” she pointed out, still not looking up. “You have to accept promotion at some point.”

“With all due respect, sir?” Lt. Rhodes’s jaw tightened. “I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate.”

* * *

“We’re going to have to talk about this at some point,” Tony said, yawning. He had forgotten to stay in front of his viewscreen--again--so Rhodes wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t falling asleep somewhere off camera again.

“Tony, you know I love you--” 

Tony snorted loudly.

“--but trust me when I say: we really don’t.”

The viewscreen shook and then Tony pulled it closer, right up to where he was resting his hand on his other arm--and, yep, falling asleep.

“We both know you’re in charge of the _shoulds_ and _should nots_ in this relationship, buddy,” he said sleepily. “No one--especially not me--is gonna fight you on that one. But still. They won’t let you stay a pilot forever.”

Rhodes raised an eyebrow.

“They can try to stop me,” he said. 

Tony grinned, yawning again. 

“Give ‘em what for, babydoll,” he said and the screen went blank.

* * *

This is how Tony met Ensign James Rhodes:

He’d docked with the U.S.S. Clarion because (a) he was developing a teensy tiny rations issue and (b) Obie had left him a message that he had to check in or his dad would come looking for him and nobody wanted that. And Tony had a routine for when he docked with a new ship--especially one with “U.S.S.” painted on the hull--and it involved slipping into their wiring before anyone thought to ask him what he was doing there. So he’d gone up through the wiring, into the places other people were too stupid to recognize as a path between _here_ and _there_ , and came out under an empty console on the bridge. 

Rhodes showed up for his shift twenty minutes later, just when Tony had really gotten into it. 

And of all the times Tony had been caught disassembling necessary bits of technology--and that was a list that was longer than his arm before he’d cracked double digits in terms of age--and all the stinkeyes people had thrown his way when they caught him, Ensign James Rhodes’s stinkeye was the best. 

For a given value of “best,” of course. It accomplished its goal at least and Tony started pushing the wiring back into the console before the lecture even began.

“Right, appalling lack of respect, you’re appalled, I can see the appalled from here,” said Tony, elbowing the now ill-fitting piece back into place, “actually, I think they can see it from the Delta Quadrant, has anyone ever told you that your appalled, like, carries across great distances?”

“What the hell did you do to my--” Rhodes started, yep, there was the lecture, hands on his hips and everything. 

“No, look, this isn’t sabotage,” said Tony, trying to simultaneously hold his hands up in surrender and surreptitiously keep elbowing the really recalcitrant piece back into its spot, he hadn’t changed it _that_ much, had he?

“Wait, are you _sabotaging_ my--”

“--I think I clearly just said I _wasn’t_ , is your translator not--”

“--console, yeah, but you brought up sabotage, it’s _clearly_ on your mind--”

“--working. Oh my god, just because someone affirms a negative doesn’t mean they’re, like, Freudianly trying to confirm the positive--”

“--and you keep going on about all this sabotage, man, and I have to assume to worst--”

The overlapping and increasingly loud argument dropped suddenly into silence when the piece Tony was now throwing his entire weight against popped out entirely, throwing him to the ground. 

Ensign Rhodes threw his head back and laughed.

But then he completely won Tony’s heart by squatting next to him, picking up the piece of equipment, and saying, “Hey, this looks _better_.”

* * *

If you cut James Rhodes in two and looked at what was at the core of his heart, you’d find the big, black expanse of space with its infinite blinking stars. He’d been born on terra firma and had spent a huge part of his childhood staring up at the night sky and wishing he could get his hands on it. When his two brothers and his sister had all dreamed of being heroes and leading starships into the great unknown, all he’d wanted was the chance to get up in the sky and then stay there.

If you cut Tony Stark in two and looked at what was at the core of his heart--well, he’d try to tell you he didn’t have one. But you’d probably find the space between things, that space between when your feet have left the ground and you’re in mid-leap but who knows what you’re going to land on. You’d find the moment when the whole universe opens up under you and anything could come next.

Tony always said Rhodey was a natural pilot because he loved travelling more than any destination but that he carried solid ground with him, locked in his bones. 

Rhodey always said Tony was a little shithead because he hadn’t encountered natural, non-negotiable gravity before the age of sixteen and that sort of thing makes someone not look when they jump.

* * *

Captain Hill wasn’t the only person who wanted to talk about Rhodes’s career options apparently. He was beginning to suspect something was fishy.

“I don’t recall ever making your acquaintance, sir,” said Rhodes when he answered a hail from Starfleet Command and Admiral Fury’s face appeared on the screen. “You might see how I could be confused seeing as this hail is labeled as ‘personal’ in my logs.”

“I don’t make acquaintances,” said Admiral Fury ominously but somehow simultaneously _peeved_. “I make contacts or I make body counts.”

Rhodes had never been so very speechless as he suddenly found himself.

“If I want to label my comms as personal,” continued Fury, “then I damn well will and no young whippersnapper--”

\--and Rhodes could not--not in a million years--have prevented himself from mouthing the word ‘whippersnapper?’ in honest-to-god consternation--

“--is going to give me any lip about it, you hear what I’m saying?”

Rhodes nodded, dumbfounded.

“I see here that you’ve stalled out at the rank of lieutenant.” Fury tapped a padd next to him on his desk. “Want to explain that?”

“Does that need an explanation?” asked Rhodes carefully. 

Fury raised an eyebrow. 

“Just prefer being a pilot to all the other options, sir,” said Rhodes, giving in. 

“Can’t be a pilot forever.”

“I can certainly try. Other people manage it by accident, don’t see why I can’t do it on purpose.”

“Not what I meant, son, and you know it.”

Fury spun the screen next to him so Rhodes could see it. An image of Tony’s ship, JARVIS, was front and center. 

Rhodes sighed. Yeah, he had known this day was always going to come.

* * *

Tony’s father had given him an escape pod for his fifth birthday and it was the best exchange between father and son in their entire history.

Actually, it was creative thinking on Tony’s part that had reached the conclusion that the escape pod belonged to him with the full express permission of his father. 

Howard Stark had been busy at the time. He had a fleet of experimental ships with even more experimental phase canons to negotiate and then sell to Starfleet, not to mention captaining the flagship vessel in its test run on a three-year mission around Mab-Bu VI. Tony had been underfoot a lot--he’d actually only been brought on that particular mission as a PR display of the family-friendly safety rating for the new Stark fleet--and Howard had waved him away with something vaguely like permission, but more like a, “not _now_ , Tony.”

But Tony had loved that escape pod from the age of five through his fifteenth birthday when Howard forgotten (with characteristically awful timing) which one was the one Tony claimed and had ordered that it be used in a test of one of the new(er) canons. Tony had tried to argue down the mechanic at the bay doors and then the other engineer remote piloting it, had tried getting into his father’s office behind the bridge to argue with him (stopped there with yet another “not _now_ , Tony”). Nothing had worked and Tony had watched on the viewscreen down in engineering as his escape pod was vaporized. 

Tony hadn’t cried, but had bought the first junked (but spaceworthy) ship lying around the next space station they docked at. He’d bought it and he’d been gone within hours.

It barely certified as a shuttle and no one believed he’d make it to the next planetary system in it. Everybody--Howard especially--thought he’d cry uncle in a couple of light years and send out an SOS to be collected and returned to the Stark fleet. 

But Tony and the shuttle _did_ make it to the next planetary system and Tony landed it on real, honest-to-god soil. It wasn’t a smooth landing--one of the thrusters went out in re-entry and something caught fire near the back. The loading door at the back had been fused shut so Tony had had to blast his way out, but those were his first steps on any planet ever and that shuttle had been there for it. It wasn’t the best or the brightest, but it was his and even his father couldn’t take it away now.

He named it Dummy. It smoked for six whole days straight, sending big gray plumes into the sky and coating Tony in a layer of grimy, stinky ash. He worked on it, though, under an oppressively sunny sky and then still worked on it into the freezing starry night. Fourteen days after he crashed-- _landed_ , he always corrected people who told the story later--he flew Dummy back up into space.

At age thirty, that shuttle was still safely stowed in the back of his ship.

* * *

Rhodes waited for Tony at the bar and nursed an Andorian ale.

“You know you’re supposed to drink it in one go, right?” asked the bartender. 

Rhodes glared at her. She held her hands up in surrender and moved on to wiping down the other end of the bar. His next drink was so going to be spat in. 

“You deserve the loogie she is going to hock in your next drink,” said Tony, appearing at his elbow. 

“Maybe I won’t get a next drink,” said Rhodes petulantly. 

Tony raised his eyebrows. “Who ruffled your feathers, Ducky?” He swung an arm around Rhodes’s shoulder as he hopped up on the stool next to him. 

“You and your damn--” He dropped his volume a couple registers and continued in a stage whisper. “You and your damn ship, Tony.”

“No, you’re right, you and Jarvis haven’t had quality time since--when was it, three cycles ago? You miss him.” Tony gave the bartender his best photogenic smile, the one that got him into places he should never be allowed, and scored himself his own Andorian ale. “Everybody misses Jarvis. He’s got charisma.”

Rhodes swallowed down the rest of his drink in one gulp. Tony downed his a second later, meeting Rhodes’s eyes over the glass. 

“Yeah, I guess I do miss Jarvis,” said Rhodes. 

He walked out of the bar, sure Tony would be a few steps behind. He’d settle with the bartender, probably sign an autograph (she had clearly clocked him when he walked in the door and Rhodes knew the look of someone working up to ask Tony for an autograph). 

He waited outside the holding doors for the dock Jarvis always ended up. 

After a couple of minutes, the door beeped and opened entirely on its own. 

“You know,” said Rhodes to the empty docking bay, “you pull shit like this with other Starfleet personnel and you are both gonna get wrote up.”

* * *

Two years after they met the first time, Lieutenant (junior grade) Rhodes met Tony Stark again under _other_ circumstances. (It would be far too optimistic to call them “better” circumstances because James did not walk away with a better opinion of Tony.)

Only two days before, James’s new ship had been caught in a standoff between a Romulan and a Klingon ship at the borders of the Neutral Zone. There had been thirty-nine hours straight of waiting, sure the fire would rain down on all of them in seconds. James had had a white-knuckle grip on the edge of his console the whole time. Sleeping hadn’t been an option because it felt disloyal to even _blink_. 

After it ended without the expected fireshow, his Captain had ordered a week of R&R for everyone.

It took the first twenty hours for James’s muscles to start to unclench. Then it took another twenty four for him to be able to sleep for more than an hour without starting awake, certain that the firefight had started and he was letting down the ship by sleeping at his post. 

He’d managed four hours of uninterrupted sleep when he declared it good enough and left his quarters to wander the halls of Qualor II, the space station they were docked at. He ended up in a bar run by a Ferengi named Bek and it was calm and mostly quiet until Tony walked in. 

Because Tony came in like a cyclone. 

He demanded that complete strangers join him in a game of Dabo and bought a round of the most appalling, disgusting brown sludge-alcohol for everyone in the bar. 

“No thanks,” Rhodes told the bartender when he came round with the tray of drinks. 

“Three more for that guy,” said Tony, zeroing in on Rhodes as he made his way around the room. “Hey, I know you.”

Rhodes rolled his eyes and tried to hunch into himself more. 

“Yeah, you took out the insides for my console once,” he said. “Took me hours to get it to fit back in.”

“Riiiight,” said Tony in a long drawl. His eyes dragged down and then even more slowly back up Rhodes, assessing. “The Clarion, yeah?”

“Yeah,” said James. The three extra brown sludge-things appeared at his elbow. Tony took one.

“Rough day?” asked Tony, leaning against the bar with all the practiced grace of a snake-charmer. It brought his elbow close to one of the brown sludge-drinks and he edged it closer to James. 

“Yeah,” said Rhodes. The drink edged even closer. Resigned, he downed it in one go. 

Tony’s eyes lit up. 

Somehow, that lead to Tony explaining to the station’s security the next morning that, no, Lt. (junior grade) Rhodes wasn’t actually floating in space, that was just his communicator and they’d needed to test its durability, clearly, and why was everyone so upset. The fact that he had James’s uniform shirt on backwards and the word “pisspot” written on his forehead had not seemed to embarrass him in the slightest. 

Rhodes walked away from that encounter even more firmly convinced his first impression of Tony was right. But then, his first impression had also been an unsettling mixture of annoyance, awe, and resigned affection, so.


End file.
